“It may be gross, but it happens,” Joanna said. “I’ve seen them myself.”
Butch shook his head. “In other words, I’m not supposed to worry about whether or not a crazed Reba Singleton was parked down by the mailbox because you think it was probably just some weak-bladdered guy who couldn’t make it all the way from Bisbee to Douglas.”
“Right,” Joanna said, while Butch shook his head and rolled his eyes. Forty-five minutes later, dinner was over and cleared away. While Jenny and Butch settled down to play a game of dominoes in the breakfast nook, Joanna opened her briefcase and spread the contents out across the dining room table. Digging through the bale of paper, Joanna located Frank Montoya’s file folder labeled “Ridder, Thomas Dawson.”
The poor print quality on the faxed material made it difficult to read. There was no way for Joanna to tell which end of the process had the dying printer problem, but she suspected that if it was on the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department’s side of the equation, Frank Montoya probably had repaired it by now or was in the process of doing so.
Joanna read through the file’s contents one page at a time. True to his nature, Frank had arranged the material in meticulous chronological order. The first item-a single piece of paper-contained a copy of Thomas Dawson Ridder’s general discharge from the army. A separate document indicated he was being dismissed for cause, for behavior ill befitting an officer and a gentleman. Nowhere in the verbiage could Joanna find any indication that Ridder’s ill behavior had to do with assaulting a superior officer. Joanna made a note to herself: “Ask Frank where he picked up info on the alleged assault.”
Turning to a sheaf of copied newspaper clippings, Joanna discovered that the first newspaper account of the Thomas Ridder shooting incident was a small three-inch article in the
That kind of surface-only reporting was typical of newspaper accounts that are written immediately after fatality incidents and before officials have an opportunity to notify next of kin. The second article was a more in- depth piece in which the reporter revealed the full names of both victim and alleged assailant.
The article recounted that at the time of Sandra Christina Ridder’s surrender and subsequent arrest, she had made a complete confession to investigators, saying that she had shot her husband in an effort to ward off another violent attack. Afterward, she had picked up her young daughter from a ballet class downtown and then had driven around for hours trying to come to terms with what she had done and also trying to decide what to do next. After disposing of the murder weapon at an undisclosed location, Sandra Ridder had finally contacted a friend, an attorney, who convinced her she should turn herself in to the authorities.
Toward the end of the article was a paragraph that answered one of the questions Joanna had planned to ask Frank:
Thomas Dawson Ridder, a self-employed landscape gardener, had recently been dismissed from the army, where he had served as Staff Sergeant with STRATCom at Fort Huachuca. He was brought up on charges for assaulting an unnamed superior officer. Rather than face court-martial in that incident, Ridder accepted a general discharge, left the army, and moved with his wife and young child to Tucson. While the child’s mother is being held without bond in the Pima County jail and with her father deceased, the Department of Child Protective Services has taken steps to remove the minor child from the family home. She has been placed in the care of relatives.
Joanna stared at the end of the article for a long time after she finished reading it. She went back into the text of the article and underlined the word “weapon.” Then she made a note in the margin. “Was this missing weapon ever found? Is that maybe what was hidden in the Tupperware bowl?” Then, as soon as Joanna wrote that comment, she had another thought.
If Joanna hadn’t been a mother herself, she might not have considered that question, but it was one she wished she’d had a chance to ask Sandra Ridder in person. And she hadn’t been able to ask that question of Sandra’s attorney, Melanie Goodson, either. There was still one person she might ask-Sandra’s mother, Catherine Yates. After mulling the idea for a few moments, Joanna dismissed that one as well. It seemed unlikely to her that Sandra’s mother would have any more of an idea about the whys and wherefores of her daughter’s behavior than Eleanor Lathrop Winfield did about Joanna’s.
The next article was a short one that recounted the plea-bargain hearing. In it Sandra admitted that some of the injuries she suffered that night had been self-inflicted. That, although she claimed her husband had beaten her on other unreported occasions, on the night in question he had not. She had shot him as he sat in his chair in front of the television news and then had staged the ransacking of the house and her own injuries in order to be able to establish a claim of self-defense.
In making his decision, the judge said that based on Sandra Ridder’s account of self-inflicted injuries, he agreed with the prosecutor in disallowing any claim of self-defense. However, in view of Tom Ridder’s known violent tendencies, the judge did find some mitigating circumstances. As a consequence, his judgment of voluntary manslaughter was one full step down from the prosecutor’s previously arranged plea bargain of second-degree murder.
Studying that article, Joanna realized that one of the standard newspeak phrases was missing from the references to Melanie Goodson. Nowhere in that article or in any of the others was there any mention that Melanie Goodson was Sandra Ridder’s “court-appointed” attorney. That meant that Melanie Goodson had taken on Sandra Ridder’s case on a fee basis.
Joanna jotted down another note to herself. “Who paid Melanie Goodson’s fee? Sandra’s mother???”
The whole while Joanna had been working, Sadie and Tigger had been sprawled comfortably in the cave beneath the table. Now, acting in unison, the two dogs scrambled to their feet. Shoulder to shoulder, they dashed from the dining room into the living room, where they stood side by side, barking frantically at the front door.
As Joanna followed the dogs to the door, she remembered Butch’s concern about the unidentified car that had been lurking at the entrance to High Lonesome Ranch. She looked out in time to see a pair of headlights pull up and stop at the gate.
“Who is it, Mom?” Jenny called from the kitchen.
Peering out between the window blinds, Joanna couldn’t tell. The vehicle hadn’t come far enough into the yard to trigger the motion-activated yard light located on the side of the garage. Feeling vulnerable and besieged, Joanna wished for the comforting presence of either one of her Glocks, but those were both under lock and key in her bedroom.
“Joey?” Butch asked. “Do you want me to go out and check?”
Before Joanna could answer, the car door swung open. In the dim illumination of the dome light, she caught a glimpse of Kristin Marsten’s cloud of blond hair as she climbed out of her Geo.
Almost sick with relief, Joanna turned back to Butch and Jenny. “It’s Kristin,” she said. “From work. If you’ll take these two barking dogs into the kitchen, I’ll let her in.”
As Jenny and Butch collected the dogs, Joanna opened the door in time to see Kristin stumbling forward. She fumbled with the gate latch. Once inside the gate, she staggered up the walkway and onto the porch looking for all the world as though she was drunk.
“Kristin!” Joanna exclaimed, stepping onto the porch. “What are you doing here? Is something wrong?”
Without a word, Kristin propelled herself across the porch. Sobbing, she fell against Joanna with such force that they both crashed into the wall.
“Kristin,” Joanna insisted. “Tell me. What’s happened?”
“My parents threw me out,” Kristin wailed. “My father told me to get out, that he didn’t want a daughter like me living in his house. He said that I had fifteen minutes to gather up what I needed and then he wanted me to clear out.”
Joanna was horrified. “What did your mother say?” she asked.
“Nothing. She sat there the whole time and listened to Dad yell at me, and she never said a word. Not a single
